Cases involving child custody disputes are stressful on clients, attorneys, judges, and, most importantly, the children. These cases can be expensive to litigate and often involve one or more mental health practitioners. In severely damaged relationships between spouses, another party to the family relationship – the child – may suffer from the continued battles of the parents.
Most custody cases involve disputes over timeshare, in which parents argue about how much time each of them should spend with the children. The court’s concern is to ensure the child has frequent continuing and quality contact with each parent. Cases where the timeshare is a struggle usually involve fathers wishing to have more than every other weekend with their children.
A far worse situation occurs when a parent turns a child into an agent of revenge against the other parent, causing the child to reject the other parent. This is known as parental alienation. Although the child may often give reasons for rejecting the alienated parent, it can be that the alienating parent is talking through the child. Crucial to the establishment of both parents’ future roles in raising the child is a determination of why the child is alienated and ultimately how to remedy and repair the broken parent/child relationship.
There are three levels of parental alienation: mild, moderate, and severe. In mild and moderate cases, parental alienation can be handled by therapy and by increasing the amount of time that the child spends with the alienated parent. Typically, a child custody evaluation will be performed to determine the severity of the problem and from that, recommendations are made for therapy and specific time share to improve the relationship between parent and child.
In the most severe alienation cases, the only real solution is to remove the child from the house of the alienating parent and place him or her with the alienated parent. In severe cases, the alienating parent lacks empathy and remorse and will continue to damage the child and sabotage the chances of securing a good relationship with the ousted parent.
In almost any divorce, children can suffer from the break-up. Parental alienated children grow up to have severe emotional problems with difficulty in relating well with others.
The challenge in severe alienation cases lies in trying to get the court to act quickly. Typically, the alienated parent will secure the services of a qualified family law attorney skilled in handling these complex emotionally charged cases to assist in getting court orders to remedy the problem.
Sadly, the process of dealing with a parental alienation case can take years, which works to the advantage of the alienating parent. Each day that passes creates a broader division between child and the alienated parent. Waiting to see if things may work out can in some cases add to the division between the alienated parent and his/her child.
Part of the problem is that alienated children usually have the outward appearance of being normal; they do well in school, sports, and other activities. The reality, however, is that these children are being emotionally burdened by the alienating parent and consequently they escape into studies, sports, or other activities in an attempt to retreat from the conflict.
While courts do not hesitate to take a child away from a physically abusing parent, “emotional abuse” is far more subtle and difficult to detect and prove in court.
Because “emotional abuse” is difficult to detect, judges and custody evaluators are reluctant to radically change the physical custody arrangement when they see what appears to be a normal child doing well in school and activities. Convincing a judge to substantially change the parenting plan for what outwardly appears to be a normal child can be extremely difficult but not impossible.
Before judges will change custody from one parent to another, they usually want to have a psychological evaluation, which can take anywhere from three months to a year to complete. Some evaluators believe that everyone can be cured with therapy and thus are very reluctant to recommend a custody change to the alienated parent.
Instead, psychologists generally recommend a reunification plan, which involves therapy. The problem is, however, that any benefits gained in therapy are quickly lost when the child returns to the emotional control of the alienating parent. Additionally, the cost of the attorneys, evaluators, and therapists can become staggering. The college education funds of many children of divorced parents have been spent in custody fights.
Once it is obvious that the reunification is not working, the court will want the same or a new psychologist to do a re-evaluation, which again takes a number of months to perform.
Meanwhile, years go by and the alienation becomes worse.
The focus in handling this case for the alienated parent is to push the court for quicker action. Attention should be given to educating the court on the long-term effects of parental alienation through hiring experts who can provide the court with a greater understanding of the long-term damage being done to the children.
